Lately, I realised that my definition of my day-to-day use of the word ancient is becoming more and more recent. I've been calling things that are early last-generation of games ancient. Like recently, chewxy asked me whether I could help him acquire Fatal Frame for Xbox. My reply? "Isn't that ancient?"
Then, I started rethinking about what I considering ancient. I don't consider my PS2 ancient, but I do consider my PSone ancient. I mean, do you remember Final Fantasy VIII? You know, from the ancient age from which Final Fantasy games were actually good? Is it fair to call something like that ancient?
My definition of ancient is a little weird. I consider something to be ancient when it is neither really ancient nor recent. In a manner of speaking, it's a relative 'ancient'ness. I call Fatal Frame ancient, but I'd call Final Fantasy VII classic. I'd call Chrono Trigger ancient, but I wouldn't call the remake for PSone ancient.
I suppose my consideration for being called ancient might have more to do with the lifecycle of a given system. I got Fatal Frame pretty early, while FF8 was out of my reach for quite a while. I never played Chrono Trigger until the PSone version. I wouldn't call Devil May Cry ancient though, so I think my definition is a little more complex than that.
A better way would probably be to say my definition of ancient is games I don't care too much about anymore that are pretty old. By pretty old, I mean anything more than 3 years old. Anything that's more than 3 years that I don't care too much about. That's a huge list actually - but I only remember stuff that I like to begin with, so it's a really massive list.
So, what games do I consider ancient? Unreal Tournament. Unreal. Half-Life and derivatives. Deus Ex. Battlefield Vietnam. Enter the Matrix. (and so on....)